Speaker 1: This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace.
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Speaker 1: website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. This
Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know the podcast, not the least
Speaker 1: of which is membered by Jerry. That was exciting. I
Speaker 1: have a bad cold. Yeah, my brain is not functioning
Speaker 1: quite right. Yeah, but this is not the old days
Speaker 1: where you have the six weeks of cold. Right, Hopefully
Speaker 1: this will be just a couple of episodes, right, bear
Speaker 1: with us, yeah, bear, But to make up for it,
Speaker 1: I have all my teeth finally, right. It's just this
Speaker 1: constant pendulum, that's right, swings from one of us to
Speaker 1: the other. Got all toothed up yesterday, feeling good. The
Speaker 1: eight months is over. Like, click your teeth together for everybody,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to Okay, you're like they're precious. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta treat them very carefully and I got fitted for
Speaker 1: a bite guard, so I when I grind my teeth
Speaker 1: at night doesn't keep happening. So things are looking good.
Speaker 1: Everything's coming up, Chuck. That's funny. Jumy has a bike
Speaker 1: guard too, from grinding her teeth. So two of the
Speaker 1: most significant people in my life on their teeth, both
Speaker 1: kind on their teeth. Did she bought her fingernaut? I don't.
Speaker 1: Does she bought her fingers? Yeah? I take out my
Speaker 1: stresses on my body. Yeah, those are short nails. Do
Speaker 1: they hurt? Do they just ache? Because sometimes if I
Speaker 1: overdo it, they do. If I when I cut my
Speaker 1: nails and I file them a little too short, they
Speaker 1: just ache for a day or so afterward. Yeah. To
Speaker 1: have it, I've always done it. Yeah, like since you
Speaker 1: can remember. Yeah, I wore that bitter polish for a
Speaker 1: while when I was a kid to try and I
Speaker 1: just cheered right through it. Yeah. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's so better. Still must bite if I kind of
Speaker 1: like it in a weird way. Yeah, the part of
Speaker 1: me that hates myself loves that taste. So weird. Well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about another habit, a habit that humans have
Speaker 1: had for a very long time. Uh. And that is
Speaker 1: the habit of using animals as models for humans, as
Speaker 1: stand ins for humans when we want to test new things,
Speaker 1: find out new things about ourselves, like will this kill me?
Speaker 1: Let's put it on an animal, right, does the heart
Speaker 1: or the lungs actually pump blood around the body. Let's
Speaker 1: cut a dog open and find out that we've been
Speaker 1: doing it for a very long time. Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: article came with its own own intro story, which was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. I thought, Yeah, we haven't done one of
Speaker 1: those in a long time. They used to be like
Speaker 1: a standard aspect of this. Yeah. Now we just babble
Speaker 1: the yeah. Yeah, we just share what's going on in
Speaker 1: our lives or day pretty much. Sorry, everybody. It must
Speaker 1: be a real letdown that I think about it. Should
Speaker 1: we do this though? All right, Well, let's go back
Speaker 1: in time, back to seven and there was a company
Speaker 1: called a pharma company called S. E. Matson Gil out
Speaker 1: of Tennessee, and they had a great, I almost want
Speaker 1: to say, wonder drug. Uh. There was an antibiot antibiotic
Speaker 1: that worked really well in its powdered form, and people
Speaker 1: started clamoring and said, we love this stuff, but sure
Speaker 1: it would be great if we could put it as
Speaker 1: a as a drop under my tongue instead. Right, I
Speaker 1: like liquids. I'm not big on powders like that weirdo
Speaker 1: Richard Petty who just takes goodies powder like me. Love
Speaker 1: that dude. That's my go to. It's got caffeine. That's
Speaker 1: what helps. Yeah, for migraines too. Really, caffeine is a
Speaker 1: big one. Yeah, Emily can't do them, but that it's
Speaker 1: my I couldn't either. It's my hangover cure. I see that,
Speaker 1: I say that out loud. Did Yeah it works, wonders.
Speaker 1: I thought, bloody Mary's where you're hangover again? I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hair of the dogger. That's what it
Speaker 1: was inventive for, you know. Yeah, all right, I'm getting
Speaker 1: a self check. I apologis. Uh. So they decided we
Speaker 1: need a liquid form of this. What was the name
Speaker 1: of the drug, uh, sul fannel man. I just had
Speaker 1: it sulfanlu minde yes or stulf vanillamide. I think sulfanla
Speaker 1: mind Okay, that's how I would say it if I
Speaker 1: were in nineteen thirties seven Tennessee, and well, uh, they
Speaker 1: had a chemist named Harold Cole Watkins who went to
Speaker 1: the lab and said, all right, let's dissolve this stuff
Speaker 1: and something called uh dieth eileen glycolthlen that one I
Speaker 1: know worked pretty well. So they added a little raspberry
Speaker 1: flavoring to make it palatable, and they said, it smells
Speaker 1: pretty good, tastes pretty good, looks pretty good. Let's sell it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they did. They sold a bunch of it, and
Speaker 1: just like one one month after mixing up a batch
Speaker 1: of the stuff, they had six thirty three shipments all
Speaker 1: over of the country because there was a huge demand
Speaker 1: for this, I mean, like syl sylfanum I was already
Speaker 1: an established drug. The idea of it being in some
Speaker 1: sort of palatable form that was gangbusters. Everybody had syphilis
Speaker 1: that they needed to take care of back then, and
Speaker 1: this kind of thing would help and if it could
Speaker 1: be a pleasant experience, well then great. And then uh
Speaker 1: that was September when they made their first shipment. Right
Speaker 1: by October, middle of October October eleventh, to be specific,
Speaker 1: a group of doctors in Tulsa contacted the a m A,
Speaker 1: the American Medical Association, and said, um, we think there's
Speaker 1: something really wrong with this new mass and guild product,
Speaker 1: which they called Sulfanila Mind Elixir or a lixer of
Speaker 1: sulfanal of mind. Um, we think it's killing people actually
Speaker 1: and killing them in one of the worst ways imaginable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a just go sleepy time. Now, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty bad death. Right. You're writhing in agony, you're
Speaker 1: probably puking your guts up. You're just you're dying from
Speaker 1: from being poisoned. So the A M A got ahold
Speaker 1: of some off and they said, you know what, the
Speaker 1: actual drug is fine, but this, uh, the solution we
Speaker 1: mix it with is the culprit. It is pure poison.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Nobody knew. And the reason why no one
Speaker 1: knew was because mass and Gill and Cole Watkins. Um there,
Speaker 1: Harold Cole Watkins and his his group of chemists were
Speaker 1: not obligated to test this stuff out. Yeah, well people
Speaker 1: knew though. That was the one frustrating thing is studies
Speaker 1: out that said this stuff was poison, and I guess
Speaker 1: they just didn't read them right. They didn't research the literature,
Speaker 1: which is a big deal. Um, But they also didn't
Speaker 1: test it out on human or animal ahead of time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they again they just looked at the tech or
Speaker 1: the appearance, the smell, a little bit of the taste,
Speaker 1: but no one took a full dose of this apparently,
Speaker 1: and um, people died. I think a hundred people died
Speaker 1: in fifteen states in about a month or so before
Speaker 1: they could get um the shipment's back. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the FDA, the barely born f D A. Um, this
Speaker 1: is one of its first actions was going and getting
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah. And the president of the company said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't broken any laws because I guess
Speaker 1: there weren't laws on the books at the time. And
Speaker 1: the head chemist, um, very sadly killed himself because of this. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: like the story goes from bad to worse and um,
Speaker 1: that was pretty Japanese of him. Yeah you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. We do a full episode on that on
Speaker 1: suicide on I mean Hardy Cary. But it had another
Speaker 1: name too, right, Yeah, did we do that or did
Speaker 1: we just mention it? I'm sure we just mentioned okay,
Speaker 1: um yeah, I think in the Japanese Stragglers and probably
Speaker 1: the samurai Yeah, and the revenge one. Yeah. Boy, it's
Speaker 1: sorry to keep track these days, yeah, really really is.
Speaker 1: So this led to a night Congress in the US
Speaker 1: enacted the FDA Cosmetic Act, which said that you know what,
Speaker 1: you need to test these drugs on animals, and that
Speaker 1: therein sort of started, at least in the US, the
Speaker 1: official like decree that you can and should do this, right,
Speaker 1: But it has been going on a long time before that,
Speaker 1: or Buddy Galen who we've talked about before, well even
Speaker 1: further back than galen Um, if you look at the Greeks,
Speaker 1: at least as far back as about five c UM.
Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks were using animals for testing, poking around
Speaker 1: figuring out how to how the human body works, and
Speaker 1: there was this idea that there was an analogy between
Speaker 1: all animals that humans shared like a lot of the
Speaker 1: same physiology of all animals. And there was a great
Speaker 1: disagreement among the Greeks in particular about whether that was true.
Speaker 1: But it didn't stop guys like Aristotle Um and uh Aerosistratus, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Hippocrates as well from basically poking around inside live animals,
Speaker 1: which is the the where the term for animal testing
Speaker 1: came from. The other terms vivisection. Vivisection is cutting something
Speaker 1: open while it's still alive. Yes, specifically an animal, right
Speaker 1: or is that no, you can vivisect humans, yeah, because
Speaker 1: dissection occurs after death. Vivisection is like cutting open I
Speaker 1: think technically surgery would be. But the idea behind vivisection
Speaker 1: is that there's this is just for experimentation actually not
Speaker 1: like let me heal that oregan right there, right, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, go back and listen to our human
Speaker 1: experimentation episode. That was a great one. I remember that one.
Speaker 1: Uh So flash forward a bit to second century Rome
Speaker 1: where our friend Galen, who we just talked about him
Speaker 1: in a podcast Our lives stuff in UK and Ireland,
Speaker 1: that's right, which hopefully people will hear him. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was a medical specialist and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I going to do a demonstration in the public. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna rent a hall. Yeah, basically, I'm gonna get this
Speaker 1: pig and I'm gonna prove that we are all a
Speaker 1: bundle of nerves by snipping certain nerves of this pig.
Speaker 1: You want to see him not squeal anymore, watch me
Speaker 1: snip this nerve. And uh, it was all planned in
Speaker 1: this philosophers, pretty popular guy. He had punching cookies out.
Speaker 1: He was really excited for this day. Philosopher that was
Speaker 1: in attendance named Alexander. Uh Demascenus, Yeah, Demastinus, one of
Speaker 1: those two. He Um said, you know what this is,
Speaker 1: bs Um, doesn't prove a thing. And in fact, none
Speaker 1: of these demonstrations prove anything, because that's a pig and
Speaker 1: we're humans. Why are you bothering? Right? And apparently the
Speaker 1: Romans had adopted from the Greeks the idea that empirical
Speaker 1: evidence didn't really prove anything. If you saw something, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it was true, right, which is a weird philosophy.
Speaker 1: I'd like to understand a little more. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to it than that, but that's just
Speaker 1: like such a completely radically different paradigm from what we
Speaker 1: have now. Um, the paradigm of science we're seeing is indeed,
Speaker 1: believing that it requires empirical evidence. Used to be the opposite,
Speaker 1: And that was Alexander's big objection, like, hey man, you
Speaker 1: can cut that pig's nerve all day long, and sure
Speaker 1: I saw it, and sure it had that effect, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't prove anything. And Galen was like, I hate you,
Speaker 1: I hate that idea, I hate Aristotle. I'm leaving because
Speaker 1: Aristotle was apparently somebody who said, Yeah, I've I've poked
Speaker 1: around in a pig or two in my time, and
Speaker 1: I've concluded that the heart and that the brain is
Speaker 1: the center. This idea that a nerve connected to the
Speaker 1: brain could control anything is hogwash, if you'll forgive the punt.
Speaker 1: Aristotle is just a big dummy, the dumbest of them all. So, um,
Speaker 1: Galen did, in fact say I'm leaving. He said, I'm
Speaker 1: taking my medical bag and I'm going home. And then
Speaker 1: everyone there was like, boa, I really want to see
Speaker 1: this pig get cut apart. Please don't leave. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: you guys, I'll do it. You twisted my arm, came
Speaker 1: back in. Uh, performed the experiment in the demonstration, and
Speaker 1: this was the one of the first recorded um examples
Speaker 1: of experimenting on animals for science. Yeah, so the ball
Speaker 1: was rolling. Yeah, And um, I don't know if Galen
Speaker 1: hadn't done it first. And he he obviously hadn't done
Speaker 1: it first because he came a few hundred years after
Speaker 1: Aristotle who had done that. But if Aristotle hadn't done it,
Speaker 1: eventually somebody who was curious enough would have grabbed a
Speaker 1: dog or a chicken or something and just cut it
Speaker 1: open and started looking at what was inside. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like it would have happened, but these are the people
Speaker 1: who are recorded doing it first. Uh. Go forward in
Speaker 1: time a bit to the late nineteenth century, and there
Speaker 1: was a microbiologist from Germany, Robert Coke, and he got
Speaker 1: he got some some anthrax. He got some blood from
Speaker 1: cows killed by anthrax. Started looking at it under a
Speaker 1: microscope and said, you know what, something in there looks
Speaker 1: funny to me. That might be the anthrax. So let
Speaker 1: me take that and put it in a mouse and
Speaker 1: see what happens. The mouse died, and he said, I'm
Speaker 1: onto something here. I'm pretty sure that was the anthrax. Uh,
Speaker 1: A big deal. It was a big deal. Again, using
Speaker 1: an animal to experiment in order to further human understanding
Speaker 1: and protect human health in life, that's right. And those
Speaker 1: are the big eats that people have used animals for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was actual, like medically, let me try and
Speaker 1: cure a disease. Yeah, not like the early guys like whoa,
Speaker 1: what is this? To what happens if I sever this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But it it went on my ancient Greek impression Um.
Speaker 1: The point I was trying to make, I guess was
Speaker 1: later on in the nineteen fifties, people started, and notably
Speaker 1: this Russian Dmitri h Bell Jeff, started using research on animals,
Speaker 1: not necessarily for curing diseases, but to study behavior. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about them in our Animal Domestication episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what he he had the great idea for these
Speaker 1: cute little silver foxes. He's like, I might like one
Speaker 1: of those is a pet. I have a niece who
Speaker 1: would love one of those. Man, have you seen those
Speaker 1: fox videos or then crying and walk around crying well
Speaker 1: or calling or whatever. And they shake their little tail
Speaker 1: when you scratch their belly, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've seen that one. It's very cute. It makes sort
Speaker 1: of like a little purring, little chirpy purr and wiggle
Speaker 1: their tail and wag their tail, and it's just like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: you're the perfect combination of dog and cats. Foxes are
Speaker 1: pretty cute, so we want to team them. Well, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what he did too, And he thought, I know
Speaker 1: that domestication usually takes many, many, many years, but let
Speaker 1: me see if I can do it in like years
Speaker 1: and Chuck. Speaking of behavioral studies, one of the most
Speaker 1: famous of all using animals was Pavlov's dogs, And I
Speaker 1: was researching it and I had no idea. Pavlov didn't
Speaker 1: just like bring a bell for his dogs to make
Speaker 1: him salivate. He surgically altered his dogs. He went and
Speaker 1: got their salivary glands and put them on the outside
Speaker 1: of their faces so that he could collect saliva samples
Speaker 1: more easily. And he created remember that cow in Athens
Speaker 1: that had a porthole in it, same thing for the dogs,
Speaker 1: so that he could collect gastric juices digestive juices for
Speaker 1: samples as well. So what you're saying is that he
Speaker 1: was a crazy madman. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I
Speaker 1: think the larger point here is that humans have been
Speaker 1: just grabbing animals or even breeding animals, for the sole
Speaker 1: purpose of using them to understand things a little more, right,
Speaker 1: whether it be cutting them open to see how anatomy works,
Speaker 1: to using them as um as for medical experiments, to
Speaker 1: de termined that um anthrax is actually blood borne and
Speaker 1: can kill you. Um two behavioral studies, right, And we
Speaker 1: should point out that at work he was able to
Speaker 1: weed out and by weed out, I mean coal, and
Speaker 1: by col we mean kill, and by kill we mean
Speaker 1: probably break their necks. Yeah. I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the big problems with with this talking about this stuff
Speaker 1: is so many euphemisms are used, like you just you
Speaker 1: just demonstrated so Um. What he did was he was
Speaker 1: able to weed out the foxes that weren't his tame,
Speaker 1: and eventually he ended up with the fox that was,
Speaker 1: by all accounts domesticated, a nice little pet. It said, Dmitri.
Speaker 1: You and it's not just animals, um, that are cute
Speaker 1: that we contame. Um. Animals and what most people would
Speaker 1: say are roughly the lower end of the spectrum as
Speaker 1: far as life is concerned, are very frequently used, like
Speaker 1: um nematodes, fruit flies, UM. They come into use largely
Speaker 1: because they have some similar processes. Like if you're studying
Speaker 1: a very ancient process or a very ancient part of
Speaker 1: the body like um insulin regulation, that you're gonna find
Speaker 1: it throughout the animal kingdom. It's gonna be pretty widespread.
Speaker 1: So the idea is, if you can track insulin regulation
Speaker 1: and a fruit fly, you could conceivably extrapolate those findings
Speaker 1: onto a human and a humans insulin regulation. And the
Speaker 1: advantage of a fruit fly or a nematode is that
Speaker 1: they're really easy to breed and they reproduce very quickly.
Speaker 1: So if you're like Dmitri BALLETV and you're studying foxes,
Speaker 1: it took him twenty five years to go through twenty generations,
Speaker 1: it would take you roughly a month, I would guess
Speaker 1: to go through about twenty generations of fruit flies. So
Speaker 1: therefore you can track mutations much more quickly, much more inexpensively.
Speaker 1: So UM, the fruit flies, the humatodes, other again lesser
Speaker 1: life forms UM have been used extensively in medical testing
Speaker 1: as well. And they and they count, they qualify. It's
Speaker 1: a live organism that's being used for experimentation purposes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, it kind of depends on what you're trying,
Speaker 1: what your aim is, what your goal is, to what
Speaker 1: animal you do use, because you can't just use any
Speaker 1: animal for anything. UM. And here's a fun fact. I
Speaker 1: did not know that the armadillo is an animal that
Speaker 1: can actually get Hanson's disease a k A. Leprosy. We
Speaker 1: knew that we talked about in the leprosy episode. I
Speaker 1: don't remember mentioning the armadillo. I am scared to death
Speaker 1: of armadillos now because of really oh yeah, when I
Speaker 1: see it, I just look at him like leprosy. You
Speaker 1: don't hug him on any longer, you know, and like
Speaker 1: you'll see him on the side of the road, you know,
Speaker 1: hit by a car or something like that. Texas, I
Speaker 1: always double check, um. Well here in Georgia too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um. I always check to make sure
Speaker 1: that my air recirculator is on when I pass them by.
Speaker 1: That like the leprosy didn't waft into my car as
Speaker 1: I drove past the roadkill that I was damaged by
Speaker 1: the leprosy episode. Uh well, they actually have the perfect
Speaker 1: body temperature to allow study on vaccines for leprosy. Um
Speaker 1: And speaking of by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt you,
Speaker 1: but I just found out last night that koalas Carrie
Speaker 1: chlamydia really and transmitted sexually and can die from it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, and are actually partially endangered in some
Speaker 1: ways because they have chlamydia. M think about that next
Speaker 1: time you want to hug from that cute little critter,
Speaker 1: you know, well, they'll tear your face off too. Uh.
Speaker 1: Should we take a little break here, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we're kind of we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back and talk more about the different animals used and
Speaker 1: why Chuck. Before we get back to I want to
Speaker 1: say this is UM this this episode and the other
Speaker 1: one that's coming out Thursday. Yeah, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: done in conjunction with these guys, UM Joe and Tim
Speaker 1: who run a site called primer Stories dot com and
Speaker 1: UM they do seasons. They're like animators, um web dudes,
Speaker 1: and it shows they know what they're doing and they've
Speaker 1: basically taken They'll they'll take essays. I wrote an essay,
Speaker 1: then they take it and they break it up into
Speaker 1: chunks and they animate it. Right, so as you're going
Speaker 1: scrolling down, you're you're reading, but you're also experiencing, um,
Speaker 1: the the art, the animation that really kind of brings
Speaker 1: out the ideas of each one. It's really really neat site.
Speaker 1: They they contacted us after our San Francisco show last year,
Speaker 1: you know, early this year, and UM, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to do one of these? And I
Speaker 1: went and looked and I was amazed and said, yes,
Speaker 1: I totally do. So you can go, UM check out
Speaker 1: the s A I wrote at a primer stories dot
Speaker 1: com slash s y s K and that one is
Speaker 1: the one we're releasing after this one. Correct, Well, it
Speaker 1: ties into both. It's it's kind of this essay about
Speaker 1: UM humans changing attitude toward animal rights. But it was
Speaker 1: fun to do and they're cool. They're cool dudes for sure,
Speaker 1: and I like what they're doing. UM. This is the
Speaker 1: fourth season, fourth season, nice plug, nice work. Thanks all right.
Speaker 1: So we were talking about UM using different animals and
Speaker 1: how if it's you know, fruit fly or a nematode,
Speaker 1: people don't get their hackles up too much. No, it's true. UM,
Speaker 1: if it is a rat or a mouse, people start
Speaker 1: getting their hackles up a little more. UM and mice
Speaker 1: are very famously used. A lot um of our genes
Speaker 1: overlap with this mouse. UM specifically this one, which is
Speaker 1: it mouse or amuse genus mice mices genus mice, So
Speaker 1: that's the one that they use most often that has
Speaker 1: the overlap UH, and their cell structure and organ organization
Speaker 1: are basically the same as ours, so UM they do
Speaker 1: a lot of testing with these mice as a result,
Speaker 1: everything from you know, disease and stuff to genetics. Two
Speaker 1: behavioral that they kind of run the gamut right on mice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, and from that point up they tend to,
Speaker 1: I think, run the gamut. Some are a little more
Speaker 1: specific than others, like beagles apparently. Yeah, really come in
Speaker 1: handy when you're testing prostate cancer um or muscular dystrophy both. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: because they can contract those or develop those, so they
Speaker 1: make great and mole models. Yeah. The these cats because
Speaker 1: their site and they're hearing and their balance. I have
Speaker 1: to ask, how are you feeling right now about this episode? Well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean like about the topic? Uh? Because
Speaker 1: you're holding it together really well? You mean I'm not
Speaker 1: crying yet? Yeah? Yeah, I've checked my emotions out of
Speaker 1: this one. I think this two parts sweet will get
Speaker 1: points across. I'm just relying on that. I'll get weepy
Speaker 1: later tonight. Do you remember the Secret of Nim? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: I had forgotten what the secret was, or I don't
Speaker 1: think it ever dawned on me what the secret really
Speaker 1: wasn't I went back and was reading about the those
Speaker 1: were mice, right, there were rats and the secret of Nim.
Speaker 1: Well we probably shouldn't say, would that be a spoiler? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so it's like the spoiler, like that's in
Speaker 1: the title. What if the secret of nim was that
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense was dead all along?
Speaker 1: You know what I think was an even Wait is
Speaker 1: that a spoiler? Yeah? I think it was. It was
Speaker 1: years ago at least. If you haven't seen the sixth
Speaker 1: Cents by now, t s for you go see the others,
Speaker 1: though a lot of people haven't seen the others. Sixth Sense,
Speaker 1: the one thing cool Kidman, that was good Man. That
Speaker 1: was great, very atmospheric Moody film, that one. And the Orphanage. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. The Orphanage is maybe even the better of
Speaker 1: the two. Yeah. Yeah. Uh So monkeys primates, um, well,
Speaker 1: non human primates, we should say, specifically, the maccaque monkey
Speaker 1: is used a lot because there, uh there's a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and they're widely distributed and uh have a
Speaker 1: robust population. So you know, they made a lot of
Speaker 1: advances into neuroscience thanks to the maccaque monkey. And then, um,
Speaker 1: there's some animals that will just do because they contain flesh,
Speaker 1: like pigs and goats are used a lot, and what's
Speaker 1: called live tissue trauma training, which is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. Um, it's used to train battlefield medics in
Speaker 1: the military. Uh, and the Coast Guard apparently, and um
Speaker 1: the animals innesthetized deeply to like surgical plane levels and
Speaker 1: um shot or blown up or um just weird stuff
Speaker 1: done to it to stimulate a battlefield trauma so that
Speaker 1: medic can do live what it's called live tissue trauma training,
Speaker 1: so they can save a life on the battlefield. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then they euthanize the they kill the animal afterward.
Speaker 1: But yes, on the battlefield. That's the whole I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole point there. And they're saying there's no
Speaker 1: substitute for that, well, which is sort of the what
Speaker 1: they scientists and doctors say. Well, well we'll get into
Speaker 1: all that, okay. Uh. One thing we should mention though,
Speaker 1: is that if you look for labels say this was
Speaker 1: not tested on animals. Uh, it's sort of like the
Speaker 1: whole free range chicken myth. Um, it's not exactly what
Speaker 1: you think it is, right, Well, free range chickens, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to have like a porch attached to the structure.
Speaker 1: They don't even have to have access to it, and
Speaker 1: you just have to have the door open so they
Speaker 1: can leave if they want. Um. But you have people
Speaker 1: have images I think of these chickens running around the fields,
Speaker 1: idyllic countryside. Yeah, but they don't they they're in the
Speaker 1: barn where the food is and they kind of don't leave.
Speaker 1: But the doors they are, so they're technically free range
Speaker 1: unless something's changed. When I worked in the chicken industry,
Speaker 1: those sad that sad year or whatever it was, I
Speaker 1: would guess absolutely nothing's changed. Probably so, But if you
Speaker 1: look for labels to say cruelty free or not tested
Speaker 1: on animals, it may not mean what you think because
Speaker 1: technically there's no oversight on a label like that, and
Speaker 1: it could mean that we did not in the final
Speaker 1: product of this cosmetic tested on animals. We didn't tell
Speaker 1: us this rouge, but all the raw ingredients that went
Speaker 1: into this from our suppliers were tested on animals. Or
Speaker 1: back in the sixties or seventies, they tested these same
Speaker 1: ingredients on animals, and there's no need for us to
Speaker 1: test them again. So now we can say not tested
Speaker 1: on animals even though these things, right, these things were
Speaker 1: tested on animals years back. UM, And actually China has
Speaker 1: changed things recently, as um, the West was getting further
Speaker 1: and further away. I think the EU banned imports of
Speaker 1: of anything that have been tested on animals cosmetics wise. Um,
Speaker 1: and China has gone the opposite direction. It is mandated
Speaker 1: that anything important into China cosmetics wise must have been
Speaker 1: tested on animals. So kind of reset things here in
Speaker 1: the West because there's a lot of Western companies like
Speaker 1: I want in on that Chinese market, and China saying well,
Speaker 1: you got to test your like, the whole thing on
Speaker 1: animals before it comes in here. Interest thing. Uh So
Speaker 1: here's the deal. Over the twentieth century, Um, we've made
Speaker 1: a lot of medical advances. Life expectancy, this is kind
Speaker 1: of a neat stat has gone up about three months
Speaker 1: per year in the twentieth century, largely due to stuff
Speaker 1: like this testing for disease. Well, yeah, people who are
Speaker 1: advocates of animal testing say that would not have happened
Speaker 1: maybe at all, had we not used animals. And life
Speaker 1: expectancy was extended three months a year from I think
Speaker 1: like eighteen forty to two thousand six or something like
Speaker 1: that every year. UM. And and that was advanced by
Speaker 1: finding things like antibiotics and vaccines, and all of the
Speaker 1: things that um not just extend the human life, but
Speaker 1: make the the extended years more enjoyable as well more healthy. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge rallying cry for people who point
Speaker 1: to animal testing and say this is this is necessary
Speaker 1: and has to continue. And actually there is a two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven poll of biomedical researchers by Nature, which is
Speaker 1: no slouch of a scientific journal, and they found that
Speaker 1: agreed with the the sentence use of animals in research
Speaker 1: is essential. There's two eleven. So that's not that sentiment
Speaker 1: isn't going anywhere. No, I think that's probably pretty much accurate. Today.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the coin, you have animal
Speaker 1: rights activists and and even if you're not an activist,
Speaker 1: just your average Joe on the street or Jane UM
Speaker 1: might say, you know what, this is unethical. Uh does
Speaker 1: a lot of harm, it's wasteful, and there are better
Speaker 1: ways to do it. In fact, some people say it's
Speaker 1: not even doing the job that it should be doing.
Speaker 1: For instance, Uh, they can cure cancer and mice, and
Speaker 1: we have been able to do this for a while,
Speaker 1: can't cure it in humans. UM. Of the HIV AIDS
Speaker 1: vaccines that were tested uh successfully on primates, they don't
Speaker 1: work on humans, and one of them may have even
Speaker 1: made humans more susceptible. Yeah yeah, so it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's two very strong sides to this argument. The f
Speaker 1: d A has said that nine tenths of all drugs
Speaker 1: and development don't work in humans after they worked in
Speaker 1: animals because you just can't tell, right, And actually I
Speaker 1: looked that up there. It's it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a fallacy. It's more like fail in clinical trials. But
Speaker 1: that's all pre clinical trials that so not just animal
Speaker 1: testing but also non animal testing where it passed that
Speaker 1: the first stages when it made it to clinical trials,
Speaker 1: of all drugs failed to work or actually harmed humans.
Speaker 1: There's another side of the coin, though, too, Chuck, how
Speaker 1: many sides are on this coin. There's it's like one
Speaker 1: of those hundreds to die that you see a D
Speaker 1: and D but never know how to use. Um. There
Speaker 1: are probably a lot of drugs out there that harmed
Speaker 1: animals and were shelved right then didn't make it into
Speaker 1: clinical trials because the animals were harmed, that may not
Speaker 1: have harmed humans that actually could have cured things. So
Speaker 1: there's people saying no, we we we need to be
Speaker 1: testing on humans because we're using this for humans. That's
Speaker 1: that's what some some prob I guess protesters against animal
Speaker 1: testing would say. And then, um, another thing that I
Speaker 1: saw is that you you tend to think like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: it's advancing science, so I can't really get in the
Speaker 1: way of that. But there are One of the critiques
Speaker 1: of that argument is not all the science is is good,
Speaker 1: that's being done and like a lot of animal lives.
Speaker 1: If you agree that animal lives are are valuable, and
Speaker 1: but that use seeing an animal life to advance scientific
Speaker 1: understanding to protect human health and life is worthy, it's
Speaker 1: a worthy use of an animal, then that you would
Speaker 1: also probably agree with the idea that wasting the animal's
Speaker 1: life and scientific testing is unforgivable. Right. So there was
Speaker 1: a survey in two thousand nine p l OS one
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the Library of Science one, the Journal of
Speaker 1: two one Animal Studies. I found that forty one percent
Speaker 1: failed to even state hypothesis are objective to the tests
Speaker 1: umtent failed to describe the statistic methods used uh in
Speaker 1: the study, didn't randomize scent, didn't use blinding, and those
Speaker 1: are basic scientific efforts that you have to make in
Speaker 1: any experiment, right, those are very basic um, which means
Speaker 1: that those things were wasted, which means those animals lives
Speaker 1: were wasted. And the suggestion is is that a lot
Speaker 1: of publicly funded science is just not very good science
Speaker 1: and it's wasting the lives of the animals involved. Well,
Speaker 1: that's sad. I'm starting to get emotional. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: let's take a break then and we'll come back and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about our old buddy, Charles D
Speaker 1: Chuck D. Darwin. Alright, so I teased everybody with Charles Darwin.
Speaker 1: Oh is that who you're talking about? Which is what
Speaker 1: I do every Halloween. I dress up as Charles Darwin
Speaker 1: and tease the local teens. Oh what are you going
Speaker 1: to dress up as for our show in d C
Speaker 1: on October twenty night. I don't know, but I'm glad
Speaker 1: you mentioned that, because we're doing a show at the
Speaker 1: Lincoln Theater and we're turning it into a Halloween ball.
Speaker 1: It's a Halloween bash, not even a ball. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a wrong above the ball, including a reading of a
Speaker 1: of a Halloween story like we do just for their
Speaker 1: ears only. Yeah, Plus we'll be dressed up. We're encouraging
Speaker 1: everyone who comes to be dressed up. Maybe I'll go
Speaker 1: to Charles Darwin. And as far as I know, it's
Speaker 1: an all ages show, but it could get spooky and
Speaker 1: our shows do get a little blue. So just f y,
Speaker 1: I you've been worn So Charles Darwin, who I made
Speaker 1: dress up as I've got. I'm pretty sure I know
Speaker 1: what I'm going as I'd rather not reveal it at
Speaker 1: the time. Um, he was kind of in on this
Speaker 1: game a long time ago, and he was he loved animals,
Speaker 1: but he also wanted to study animals, but he also
Speaker 1: wanted to treat them humanly while he studied animals. Sounds
Speaker 1: sounds like Charles Darwin kind of approach. Yes. Uh So
Speaker 1: there was a eight seventy four there was like people
Speaker 1: were actually starting to get in trouble for some of
Speaker 1: these things. Uh. In eighteen seven, any for these scientists
Speaker 1: were actually put on trial for torturing dogs because they
Speaker 1: wanted to see how absent and alcohol affected their nervous system.
Speaker 1: So they cut them open and exposed them to these liquids.
Speaker 1: They just dowsed them, And is what I what I'm
Speaker 1: taking from I have no idea, I guess, so they're
Speaker 1: actually acquitted. But um, it sort of brought things into
Speaker 1: the UH in the front of everyone's minds and Darwin.
Speaker 1: People were saying, let's not do this at all, and
Speaker 1: Darwin stepped in and said he was a little more
Speaker 1: moderate and said, you know what, let's craft a bill
Speaker 1: here in the United Kingdom where you can do this,
Speaker 1: but do it humanely. And that resulted in the Cruelty
Speaker 1: to Animals Act of eight. It's pretty great. It was advancement,
Speaker 1: it was, but the UK actually has long led the
Speaker 1: way in the West for animal rights. Um, even even
Speaker 1: before that, as we'll see, they they were trying to
Speaker 1: protect animals, as we'll see in the next episod So
Speaker 1: that's right. And then a little later in ur the
Speaker 1: University's Federation of Animal Welfare said, let's get these two
Speaker 1: dudes zoologist and a microbiologist, Russell and Birch, and just
Speaker 1: do a lot of research, guys, and come back with
Speaker 1: some findings that we can use. And boy did they. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they were like, there's a lot better that we
Speaker 1: can do in protecting animals. They um, scientists are typically
Speaker 1: dumb and can only remember things through a literation. So
Speaker 1: these guys came up with the three RS, something that
Speaker 1: could be put on a p s a poster um.
Speaker 1: The three RS. I'm just teasing about the scientist thing,
Speaker 1: our replacement, reduction and refinement. Right, yes, so your first
Speaker 1: goal is to to find a replacement of the animal.
Speaker 1: Is there any alternative to the animal in this experiment? Yeah, well, like, uh,
Speaker 1: a sentient animal with a not like with a worm
Speaker 1: perhaps instead of a mouse, or you know, if you
Speaker 1: can find uh willing robot. Right, you know that it's
Speaker 1: the bill. The second one's reduction. You want to reduce
Speaker 1: the number of animals used to the absolute minimum. You
Speaker 1: don't want to have any spare bang utangs hanging around.
Speaker 1: You want to know how many you're gonna use, and uh,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that you can kill. Correct and
Speaker 1: then finally refine, which means and and this is you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the opposite of what you were talking about
Speaker 1: with those awful stats that you said, like, let's refine
Speaker 1: this and at least get your technique down. Uh so
Speaker 1: well that the suffering is minimized to its bare minimum
Speaker 1: as well the waste is reduced. Yeah yeah, Um, and
Speaker 1: that that uh, that was nine that Russell and Birch
Speaker 1: released the three RS. This is two thousand nine. That
Speaker 1: that one study I cited was conducted years later. So, uh, Peter,
Speaker 1: you know the people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
Speaker 1: We've talked about them quite a bit on the show.
Speaker 1: They are down with the three RS, of course, but
Speaker 1: they say, you know what, that's not enough, though. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of studies that show that they're way
Speaker 1: better ways of doing things these days than using animals
Speaker 1: with the computer modeling that we have now and software
Speaker 1: and humans. Yeah, and um, they're they've figured out techniques
Speaker 1: using stem cells um to grow organs or organs cells
Speaker 1: or like say, skin cells in vitro, and then exposing
Speaker 1: them to the chemicals you want to test, and then
Speaker 1: not only will you have your reaction or non reaction,
Speaker 1: you'll also have it with like a human human cells.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, oh, it messed this rabbits face
Speaker 1: up pretty bad. Well, we'll just assume that it will
Speaker 1: mess up a human skin as well. It's you know,
Speaker 1: this stuff really burned through that that human skin tissue
Speaker 1: that we sent the sized, So now we know for
Speaker 1: sure not to give it to humans. There's also something
Speaker 1: called because a big objection to that is well, that's
Speaker 1: just a it's a skin. It's a group of skin
Speaker 1: cells in vitro that doesn't really replicate you know, these
Speaker 1: really intricate interplays that make up organs and systems of organs.
Speaker 1: And there's a company out called um OH. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what they're called, but their invention is organ on
Speaker 1: a chip. It's amazing, dude. I watched this video about
Speaker 1: it last night, which that's the only way it could
Speaker 1: be better. It's if you could eat it afterwards, but
Speaker 1: it'd be pretty messed up if you did so. It's
Speaker 1: like a USB stick size module. That's the word I'm
Speaker 1: going with. It's transparent and um say, the long on
Speaker 1: a chip has some branching stuff, and inside there is
Speaker 1: a layer of um lung cells and the that replicate
Speaker 1: and simulate human lung So you have human lung cells
Speaker 1: growing in the and arranged in the way that they
Speaker 1: would in the human lung. And then the this device
Speaker 1: allows you to pass air over the top and blood
Speaker 1: over the top and introduce bacteria and introduce white blood
Speaker 1: cells and study what they do. So you're replicating the
Speaker 1: function of a human lung on this little thing, which
Speaker 1: is all simulation. It is, but it's a real simulation,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's using real lung cells and they're functioning
Speaker 1: like a lung normally would, except you don't have to
Speaker 1: you don't have to use it. You don't have to
Speaker 1: say here and and inhale this. We'll just pass this
Speaker 1: antibiotic across the lung cells and it will treat it
Speaker 1: like the human lung would. It's amazing. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: if you could eat it afterwards, eat the human lung
Speaker 1: cells with some guacamali, you'd be like this, this is
Speaker 1: the circle of life is complete. Well, that's sort of
Speaker 1: one of the big points so that Peter and a
Speaker 1: lot of organizations uses that we're we're so vans now
Speaker 1: with our computer modeling and these simulations that they're actually
Speaker 1: they are better ways than like it's sort of archaic
Speaker 1: to experiment on an animal like these are not only
Speaker 1: cruelty free, but it's smarter and better, Right, that's the
Speaker 1: argument they make. Yeah, and I mean the statistics cut
Speaker 1: both ways. Like if you look at Peter's stats, they're
Speaker 1: like animal models are predictive. It's in this dismal range
Speaker 1: right for you know, human outcomes, and then the people
Speaker 1: who are in favor of animal testing stay, well, these
Speaker 1: these computer models are actually the ones that have dismal results.
Speaker 1: So both sides. I guess it's just too new, maybe
Speaker 1: it's unproven. Yeah, but there does seem to be a
Speaker 1: movement a foot in uh bio medicine to replace as
Speaker 1: much as possible computer models with animals with computer models. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of the other things that animal rights groups lobby for,
Speaker 1: things like, well how about you do like CT scans
Speaker 1: or m r s you're not actually harming the animal,
Speaker 1: or this thing called micro dosing where you actually give
Speaker 1: humans just very very small doses of these medicines that
Speaker 1: won't be enough to hurt them if things don't work out,
Speaker 1: but you could tell if it's going to be effective
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, it still produces that reaction on a
Speaker 1: molecular level. It's just not going to have a system
Speaker 1: wide toxic effect on it. That's pretty that's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Um and and they're there. There's some change, but at
Speaker 1: the same time there's also um some digging in on
Speaker 1: on both sides as well, Like, for example, with that
Speaker 1: live tissue trauma training. Um, there was a there's a
Speaker 1: movement to replace uh, any live animal with a dummy
Speaker 1: or a mannequin or something like that. And the people
Speaker 1: who are proponents of using animals and live tissue trauma
Speaker 1: training say, man, there's something that can happen to a
Speaker 1: battlefield medic during common at and that's called freezing. When
Speaker 1: they're presented with a human being with you know, a
Speaker 1: major trauma, they can just sit there and freeze and
Speaker 1: freak out because this is the first time they've been
Speaker 1: exposed to it. One of the aspects of you know,
Speaker 1: blowing the leg off of a pig is that this
Speaker 1: person is having to work on a pig. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a pig, but it's a live pig. It's not
Speaker 1: a right exactly, and maybe they made they made the
Speaker 1: person care for the pig for like a week first,
Speaker 1: so that it has even more Well, I just made
Speaker 1: that up, but you could you could see how the
Speaker 1: how that would like that would be tough to replace.
Speaker 1: That's a tough one to argue with. But I think
Speaker 1: ultimately the question is race chuck um, And this is
Speaker 1: what we're gonna address in the next episode. Is is
Speaker 1: probably the largest question of all and is do humans
Speaker 1: have or have humans ever had the right to use
Speaker 1: animals for our own means? And that's uh, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that one on the next episode. Boy, that's a
Speaker 1: nice cliffhanger, I think, so too well done. Do we
Speaker 1: have listener mail this one? Yeah? And you know what,
Speaker 1: not only that, we have a two part listener mail
Speaker 1: awesome that has its own cliffhanger. Man. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's get to it. So if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about animal testing, you can type that word in
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works dot com and it
Speaker 1: will bring up this excellent article. And since I said
Speaker 1: search bar, it's time for part one of listener Mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. This one was so robust. It's an unprecedented
Speaker 1: to part from Evan, not Ivan, but Evan, will you
Speaker 1: grow up to be a good man? I hope? So
Speaker 1: now that's Levi on. Oh yeah, well the else silent
Speaker 1: um and those were weren't the right words anyway, but
Speaker 1: it's adorable. All right, here we go. First off, guys,
Speaker 1: gotta say you're not only my favorite podcast, but you're
Speaker 1: also my ten year old son's favorite podcast. Listen to
Speaker 1: every episode at least twice how about that. And my
Speaker 1: son is also a big fan of your TV show
Speaker 1: and the animated shorts why they're in deep. However, my
Speaker 1: beautiful fiance is not. In fact, there have been times
Speaker 1: when I will be sitting next to her and she's
Speaker 1: reading a book and I'll have my headphones listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast so I don't disturb her, and I'll burst
Speaker 1: out laughing like a crazy person. In her words, uh
Speaker 1: this quote crazy end quote. Behavior of mine is directly
Speaker 1: uh related to listening to you two, So thanks for
Speaker 1: that anyway. One of the reasons are right is to
Speaker 1: call your attention. You said on the Sugar It Powers
Speaker 1: the Earth podcast, Chuck says, one day we're gonna rerecord
Speaker 1: a show and not realize it, we're gonna hear about it. Well,
Speaker 1: you managed to do it. You probably heard from someone
Speaker 1: else by now. But you have covered the topic of
Speaker 1: customs twice, the most recent one and all gets the
Speaker 1: previous one in September. Don't get me wrong, both were great.
Speaker 1: Honestly think that both of you legit only forgot. I
Speaker 1: was waiting for either of you to acknowledge at the
Speaker 1: second time, and that never came. And Ivan, you are
Speaker 1: right on the money. Bou Josh emailed me and said, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: guess what we've done this. It finally happened, we released it,
Speaker 1: and um, at first I was like shoot, but then
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, We've got a nice bit
Speaker 1: of trivia. Now it was bound to happen, and now
Speaker 1: people have. It's It's almost like an easter egg, right
Speaker 1: that listeners and fans can say, like, you know which
Speaker 1: one they did twice? You're a true fan, you know
Speaker 1: you know it's weird. Though, UM, at no point during
Speaker 1: the research and recording of the Customs episode was I like,
Speaker 1: this sounds really familiar? Or did we talk about this nothing,
Speaker 1: no point whatsoever. Nope. So that might make the first
Speaker 1: Customs episode the least memorable episode we've ever done. Perhaps
Speaker 1: so Part two you can look for in the second
Speaker 1: part of this sweet coming out from Von wherein he
Speaker 1: made a list of all of our band names over
Speaker 1: the years. He also made a list of your puns.
Speaker 1: I am not puny. I take issue with that. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about it in the next episode. Great, that's a
Speaker 1: great set up if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, like lev On Evon and what is his
Speaker 1: son's name? Did he say. He didn't say, but Evan
Speaker 1: and son. Yeah, it'sund like a funeral home. Uh. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
Speaker 1: or hang out with me at Josh um Clark. You
Speaker 1: can hang out with us on Facebook at Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know and check out Chuck
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and me it's super Josh
Speaker 1: Clark both on Facebook. We're on Instagram. We're on social
Speaker 1: media that hasn't even been invented yet. Plus, you can
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
Speaker 1: home on the web, the newly updated Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. H